Comfortably Numb
by Laundry Basket
Summary: After the deaths of both of his parents, Rick attempts to cope with his walls crumbling around him. [Oneshot] [RickJack, SLASH]


Rick is my favorite Harvest Moon character, next to Flora and Murrey, yet he seems to be heavily disliked by many people. So I decided to write a fanfic with a different view on him. Rick/Jack, with a few other pairings implied; the former is **SLASH/SHOUNEN-AI**. As in, a man sexually attracted to another man. There is no sexually explicit content, but nonetheless, if you have any troubles with this, please find another fic to read, and avoid flaming this poor fanfic of mine. This is fairly angsty, but it's got a (sort of) happy ending, I promise. Reviewers will receive lowfat lattes and some oreos.

To Rab and Spry, the most brilliant idiots in the world; my inspiration, my encouragement, and a persistent reminder that the world is insane and to take it as such would be one of my better decisions.

---------------------------

Rick wiped the sweat away from his brow and let out a quiet sigh, checking one more time to make sure that all the chickens were under the roof of the barn before going back inside the Poultry Farm, tired blue eyes casting a wistful glance behind the desk where his mother used to sit before shutting the heavy doors of the house behind him. He collapsed on the couch and stared disinterestedly at the flickering fire in front of him as it thawed out his appendages, which felt nearly frozen after having spent so much time outside in the biting winter. He knew it was bad for his health; with his mother's disease potentially hereditary he didn't want to overexert himself, but there was far too much work to do.

Yes... far too much work. A little over a year ago, his mother, Lillia, had passed away, leaving the farm work entirely up to him. To make things worse, Popuri, who admittedly hadn't done much work on the farm anyway, had married Kai and moved away soon after, leaving him alone with a job he wasn't even happy with. He only saw his sister in the Summer, and they rarely talked if at all; Rick had given up trying to protect her from herself, and Popuri was still angry at him for trying to do so for so many years. She hadn't even come to their mother's funeral in her haste to get away from her overprotective brother.

And his father... his father. Rick blamed his father for everything now. When Lillia was alive they had more fights than any household in Mineral Town, thanks to Popuri's rebellious spirit coupled with his own stubbornness and increased distrust of his father as the years passed and his letters grew infrequent. When the news arrived that his father had died of heatstroke, Lillia seemed to lose all hope, and her condition worsened as she stopped taking medication and didn't even care enough to get out of bed in the morning. It was a slow, agonizing decline as Rick watched his mother's health decay.

The death of his father and subsequent loss of his mother affected Rick in strange ways. He felt shock, like a sharp blow to the gut, and it began to fade to a numbness that left him feeling painfully apathetic. He wanted to feel more than what he did, something other than the persistent dull burning sensation in his heart that tightened every time he thought about it; but all that remained was that dull burning, and he felt angry at himself for not feeling more depressed by the death of his own mother.

And here he was, alone, in this large house with barely any friends left. He and Karen had dated for a while, and at one point he had even thought of proposing, but Karen had dumped him with the excuse that she needed time to think about herself. A week later he heard about Karen dating the town doctor, and the blue feather lying on the table near his bed angered him every time he saw it, but he couldn't bring himself to throw it away, even after rumors of Karen's engagement to the Doctor began to circulate. His mind was having great difficulty wrapping around the fact that every aspect of his life was crumbling.

There was one friend left who cared to stop by, a friend who actually cared about his problems and seemed to like him as a person, something that Rick wasn't used to. He was used to his sister's temper tantrums and yells of "I hate you", coupled with his mother's sad looks at how dysfunctional her son had become. Even Karen beat him up when they were children, and occasionally referred to him as a "loser", which he felt was a fitting term; he generally felt like a misfit among the villagers and received few compliments despite his hardworking nature, until Jack came along.

Jack befriended him within the first few days of arriving in town, and for three years their friendship had not waned - Rick wasn't sure why Jack was willing to stay such good friends with him, especially considering how reclusive and depressed he had become in the past year, but he was grateful for the friendship nonetheless. But recently Rick's feelings had began to evolve, and he now felt himself attracted to the man, something that scared him immensely. He had never felt romantically inclined towards men in the past, and he didn't want to lose the only friendship he had left, but his feelings became stronger with each passing day, and it was getting harder to ignore as his heart raced every time Jack said a word to him. He began trying to avoid him, hoping the feelings would dissolve with time.

But they hadn't. It had only hurt more.

Rick pushed his glasses onto his forehead and put his face in his hands, his cheeks thoroughly wet from tears that he hadn't realized were falling. He tried to wipe them away, causing his face to redden and feel sore in response, and he choked back a miserable sob as he stared at the ceiling through slender, calloused fingers. "What's the point?" He whispered, tangling his hands in his bright orange hair and shutting his eyes tightly as if it would make things go away.

"There's always a point." said a voice from behind him, and he turned around quickly, his glasses falling off his face from the sudden movement, though he didn't really care. He stared through foggy vision and managed to make out Jack's figure standing a few feet away, flickering gold light from the fireplace illuminating an otherwise blue and brown blur. He had nearly forgotten about the spare key he had lent to the farmer in the past in case of an emergency, and he couldn't decide whether he was happy or sad to see him there.

"Oh, it's you." Rick said quietly, his voice scratchy and slightly high-pitched. He brought himself to a sitting position on the couch to make room for Jack, wrapping his arms around his knees and hugging them tightly to his chest, disheveled hair pooling on his shoulders. Jack took the silent offer and approached, sidestepping the glasses on the floor and sitting next to the distraught man on the couch, gazing at him for a couple of seconds before turning his head to stare at the fireplace.

Rick turned to look as well, and they watched the dying embers together in silence, with neither very sure of what the other was thinking. Eventually Jack roped an arm around the other man, tugging him closer, and Rick flinched briefly then relaxed, the strong hand on his shoulder comforting. A number of questions rose in his mind; why Jack was there, or why it felt so good to be close to him like this... was he angry? Did he figure out that Rick had been avoiding him for the past two weeks? Did he figure out why?

These worries quickly started to fade from his mind as Jack tipped up his chin with two fingers to look directly at him, dark chestnut staring into deep obsidian blue, Rick's eyes still wet and red though the tearstains on his cheeks had faded.

And when Jack leaned in to kiss him, Rick didn't pull away.


End file.
